Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177

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Journal of Hydrology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhydrol

Comparing statistically downscaled simulations of Indian monsoon

at different spatial resolutions
K. Shashikanth a,b, C.G. Madhusoodhanan a, Subimal Ghosh a,c,⇑, T.I. Eldho a,c, K. Rajendran d,
Raghu Murtugudde c,e
a
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India
b
Department of Civil Engineering, University College of Engineering, Osmania University, Hyderabad 500007, India
c
Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India
d
CSIR Fourth Paradigm Institute (CSIR-4PI), Bangalore 560037, India
e
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o s u m m a r y

Article history: Impacts of climate change are typically assessed with fairly coarse resolution General Circulation Models
Received 2 June 2014 (GCMs), which are unable to resolve local scale features that are critical to precipitation variability. GCM
Received in revised form 15 October 2014 simulations must be downscaled to finer resolutions, through statistical or dynamic modelling for further
Accepted 16 October 2014
use in hydrologic analysis. In this study, we use a linear regression based statistical downscaling method
Available online 24 October 2014
This manuscript was handled by G. Syme,
for obtaining monthly Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall (ISMR) projections at multiple spatial
Editor-in-Chief resolutions, viz., 0.05°, 0.25° and 0.50°, and compare them. We use 19 GCMs of Coupled Model Intercom-
parison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) suite and combine them with multi model averaging and Bayesian model
Keywords:
averaging. We find spatially non-uniform changes in projections at all resolutions for both combinations
Statistical downscaling of projections. Our results show that the changes in the mean for future time periods (2020s, 2050s, and
Bayesian multimodel average 2080s) at different resolutions, viz., 0.05°, 0.25° and 0.5°, obtained with both Multi-Model Average (MMA)
Uncertainty and Bayesian Multi-Model Average (BMA) are comparable. We also find that the model uncertainty
Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) decreases with projection times into the future for all resolutions. We compute Signal to Noise Ratio
(SNR), which represents the climate change signal in simulations with respect to the noise arising from
multi-model uncertainty. This appears to be almost similar at different resolutions. The present study
highlight that, a mere increase in resolution by a way of computationally more expensive statistical
downscaling does not necessarily contribute towards improving the signal strength. Denser data
networks and finer resolution GCMs may be essential for producing usable rainfall and hydrologic
information at finer resolutions in the context of statistical downscaling.
Ó 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction system to increasing the green house gas concentrations

India receives more than 80% of its total rainfall during the four
summer monsoon months; June to September (Webster et al.,
1998; Menon et al., 2013). Agriculture, water supply, industrial
production and allied activities depend on the Indian summer
monsoon rainfall (ISMR hereafter) and hence reliable regional
projection of ISMR, under climate change is necessary for adapta-
tion and policy framing. Impacts of climate change are assessed
by General Circulation Models (GCMs), which are at present the
most reliable tools to simulate the response of the global climate
⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, India. Tel.: +91 22 2576 7319, fax:
+91 22 2576 7302.
E-mail address: subimal@civil.iitb.ac.in (S. Ghosh).
(Prudhomme et al., 2002; IPCC, 2007). Since GCMs typically oper-
ate at coarse resolutions, they often fail to capture the finer scale
processes that affect regional climate. Hence, the outputs from
GCMs cannot be directly used in the regional impact assessment
studies, specifically in hydrologic applications (Salvi et al., 2013).
The new generation climate models in the CMIP5 (Coupled
Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5) suite have undergone sev-
eral improvements in terms of physics and resolutions (Taylor
et al., 2012). Still, outputs from CMIP5 models cannot be directly
used for regional scale projections because of the lack of regional
specificity in their simulations due to the relatively coarse resolu-
tions. Such coarse resolution projections must be downscaled to
obtain regional/local scale projections. They can be obtained either
by statistical or dynamic downscaling approaches. In dynamical
downscaling, a higher resolution regional climate model (e.g.,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.10.042
0022-1694/Ó 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
3164 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177
RegCM, Limited Area Model (LAM), PRUDUNCE) is embedded
within a GCM, which provides large scale boundary conditions.
Such regional models also incorporate sub-grid/local scale features
to deliver high resolution outputs (Fowler et al., 2007; Maraun
et al., 2010). The main limitation of dynamic downscaling method
is the requirement of huge computational resources (Wilby and
Wigley, 1997). In addition to the limitations of the models them-
selves in capturing the regional and local land, atmosphere, and
ocean interactions (see for e.g., Liang et al., 2012).
Statistical downscaling belongs to the class of data driven
approaches, which not only overcomes the limitation of computa-
tional requirement but also can be applied to any region of inter-
est given sufficient data for constructing the statistical model.
Statistical methods are thus predominantly used when sufficient
lengths of historical data are available for establishing the requi-
site stable statistical relationships (Wilby et al., 2004). The philos-
ophy of statistical downscaling method is based on the
development of a relationship between predictors (coarse resolu-
tion climate variables/synoptic scale circulation patterns) and a
predictand (e.g., rainfall). They are classified into weather gener-
ators (Wilks, 1999a,b; Khalili et al., 2009) weather typing/classifi-
cation (Corte-Real et al., 1995) and transfer functions (Ghosh and
Mujumdar, 2009). Statistical downscaling methods build different
types of empirical relationships (like parametric/nonparametric
and/or linear/nonlinear) between large-scale atmospheric predic-
tor variables and the regional climate variable(s) of interest (pre-
dictand) (Wilby et al., 2004; Kannan and Ghosh, 2013). In
statistical downscaling, the regional climate is assumed to be con-
ditioned by the large-scale climate predictors/variables and regio-
nal/local physiographic and region-specific processes (Von Storch,
1995, 1999; Kannan and Ghosh, 2013; Dobler and Ahrens, 2011).
The statistical downscaling methodology has been extensively
used for regional applications all over the globe. Complete and
comprehensive reviews of downscaling techniques, their advanta-
ges and limitations, recent developments can be found in the
Maraun et al. (2010), Fowler et al. (2007), Schoof (2013). The var-
ious statistical downscaling approaches are summarized in
Table 1.
The results of regional projections are always prone to uncer-
tainties stemming from multiple sources. The main sources of
uncertainty are model uncertainty, uncertainty from anthropo-
genic/scenario forcing factors and natural variability (Hawkins
and Sutton, 2009; Maraun et al., 2010; Woldemeskel et al., 2012;
Yip et al., 2011). The use of multiple downscaling models may also
result in downscaling uncertainty (Dibike and Coulibaly, 2005;
Ghosh and Katkar, 2012; King et al., 2012). Model uncertainty is
the main source of uncertainty and mainly attributed to incom-
plete understanding of geophysical processes and limitations in
solving numerical schemes, parameterizations, and resolutions
(Stainforth et al., 2007; Räisänen, 2007). Anthropogenic forcings
and scenarios describe how plausible trajectories of different
aspects of future climate includes emissions, socio-economic
assumptions, energy use, population, air pollutants, land use and
consequent radiative forcing and temperature anomalies (Wayne,
2013). The internal uncertainty is due to chaotic climate system
and natural forced variability is in fact considered ‘unforced’ vari-
ability since the only source of energy is the solar radiation
(Maraun et al., 2010). It is also clear now that higher latitudes
are dominated by natural variability and the anthropogenic cli-
mate signal may become distinctly identifiable only in the tropics
over the next several decades (Deser et al., 2012). Even in the
tropics, the relatively small decorrelation scales of precipitation
compared to temperatures offer severe challenges to the state-of-
the-art GCMs in delivering reliable projections of rainfall
variability. It is thus important to understand the regional and local
uncertainties in these projections by combining statistical
approaches to extract regional renditions of future projections
from these models. This is the main motivation of our study.
The uncertainty stemming from various formulations can be
assessed by ensembles of simulations based on different GCMs,
or ensembles of particular GCMs with different initial conditions
or with perturbed physics. The important roles played by these
sources of uncertainty depend on the time scales. In the decades
of the immediate future, the projections are argued to be domi-
nated by model uncertainties and internal variabilities whereas
in the following decades, scenario uncertainties are significantly
larger (Hawkins and Sutton, 2011; Yip et al., 2011; Deser et al.,
2012). However, the internal variability increases at smaller spatial
scales and shorter time scales (Hawkins and Sutton, 2009).
Prudhomme and Davies (2009) reported that uncertainties due to
downscaling methods and emission scenarios are of similar magni-
tude, and generally smaller than GCM uncertainty for the 2080
time horizon. The uncertainties associated with the use of multiple
models have been studied by many researchers (Ghosh and
Mujumdar, 2009; Watanabe et al., 2012; Woldemeskel et al.,
2012). Uncertainty across different GCMs has been measured by
a metric/skill known as coefficient of variation (CV) (Watanabe
et al., 2012; Shashikanth et al., 2013) where higher CV denotes high
uncertainty. The CV is defined as the ratio of standard deviation to
the mean and it is a dimensionless quantity. Shashikanth et al.
(2013) measured the uncertainty resulting from the usage of
multiple GCMs from both CMIP3 and CMIP5 suites for ISMR simu-
lations for the future time horizon (2081–2100) and reported that
statistically downscaled simulations of CMIP5 show lower uncer-
tainty compared to those of CMIP3.
The projections of climate variables are now presented in a
probabilistic framework (Raftery et al., 2005). This has led to the
development of new methods like Bayesian Multi-model Averag-
ing (BMA) (Tebaldi et al., 2004, 2005) which is a better alternative
to Multi-Model Averaging (MMA), where equal weights are given
to all GCMs for both past and future projections. In the BMA, differ-
ential weights are assigned to the GCMs, based on performances
during the historic period and convergence (agreement with
majority of ensemble members in the projection period). Miao
et al. (2013, 2014) applied the BMA technique for temperature sim-
ulations in the different land regions of globe and in the Northern
Eurasia and showed that BMA technique is superior to MMA.
Giorgi and Mearns (2002) have developed REA (Reliability
Ensemble Average) method for estimating the probability of regio-
nal climate change exceeding a given threshold based on ensem-
bles of different AOGCM model simulations. The method takes
into account two reliability criteria as mentioned above; model
performance for the present climate and convergence of the simu-
lated future changes by all models (convergence criterion). Tebaldi
et al. (2004, 2005) developed a Bayesian Multi-Model Averaging
(BMA) approach to determine Probability Density Function (PDF)
of temperature change from the outputs multi-model ensembles.
Duan and Philips (2010) applied the BMA technique for the esti-
mation of weights assigned to individual historical simulations and
future climate projections. In their study, the authors used 17
GCMs from the CMIP3 suite. They also computed the climate
change signal from multimodel projections and the Signal to Noise
Ratio (SNR), where noise refers to the uncertainty resulting from
the disagreement between model simulations. Accurate regional
projections are argued to be a key research challenge in climate
change science (Schiermeier, 2010), and in the recent decade,
efforts have been made for finer resolution projections. For
dynamic downscaling, the key challenge lies in huge computa-
tional requirements, while for statistical downscaling, the require-
ment is the availability of finest resolution data. With the
improvements in computational power, as well as with the avail-
ability of newer fine resolution gridded products, the resolution
 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177 3165

Table 1
Statistical downscaling approaches to different case studies.

S. No. Literature citation Case study Features of the model

1 Bardaossy and River Ruhr (Germany) A multidimensional stochastic model is developed for the space–time distribution of daily
Plate (1992) precipitation
2 Hewitson and Tropical Mexico region Empirical relationships between sea level and 500 mb circulation fields, and the local
Crane (1992) precipitation in Chiapas, Mexico, are derived using an Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)
3 Corte-Real et al., Portugal The multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) model was used to capture the observed
1995 relationships between sea level pressure (SLP) anomalies over the Euro-Atlantic sector and
the winter time (December–February) monthly rainfall
4 Convoy and Jones, British Isles Analysis using Lamb weather types, counts of weather fronts and air flow indices show strong
1998 relationships with daily rainfall characteristics
5 Wilks(1999) 30 stations located in the A stochastic weather generator model is developed and used for downscaling
state of Oregon in US
6 Mehrotra and Sydney Australia K-nearest neighbor based nonparametric, non-homogeneous hidden Markov model is
Sharma (2005, developed to generate rainfall sequences at multiple locations using synoptic scale circulation
2006) patterns
7 Ghosh and Orissa, India A linear regression developed between GCM simulated predictors Vs rainfall data. Principal
Mujumdar (2006) component analysis (PCA) is used to reduce the dimensionality and fuzzy clustering
algorithm is used to classify the components
8 Anandhi et al. Malaprabha reservoir The monthly precipitation is downscaled using support vector machine
(2008) catchment in India
9 Raje and Mahanadi catchment Developed conditional random field based algorithm to downscale rainfall. Direct
Mujumdar (2009) Orissa, India classification of dry/wet days as well as precipitation amount is achieved within a single
modelling framework
10 Mehrotra and Network of 45 rain gauges Used stochastic downscaling framework for simulation of multisite daily rainfall occurrences.
Sharma (2010) near Sydney, Australia Rainfall occurrences are modelled using a modified Markov mode and rainfall amounts are
estimated using nonparametric kernel density simulator conditioned on previous time step
rainfall using large scale predictors
11 Ghosh (2010) Assam and Meghalaya, SVM based relationship between predictors and predictand. Probabilistic Global search
India algorithm, a probabilistic search technique is used to compute the optimum number of
parameters for SVM; uncertainty addressed using modified Reliability Ensemble Average
(REA) technique
12 Groppelli et al. Oglio River basin in Italy Stochastic space random cascade (SSRC) approach is developed to downscale rainfall from
(2011) GCM data under climate change scenario
13 Kannan and Ghosh Mahanadi River Basin, Developed the Kernel Regression based downscaling model conditioned on weather state
(2013) Orissa, India based on Classification And Regression Tree (CART) method
14 Salvi et al. (2013) India Used CART and Kernel Regression technique to project rainfall using CCCma GCM
15 Gutmann et al. USA The downscaling algorithms considered are daily and monthly-disaggregated-to-daily Bias
(2014) and Bias Corrected Constructed Analog (BCCA), Asynchronous Regression (AR), methods

for regional modelling is getting enhanced; however, the science
question, which remains unaddressed, is whether there is a corre-
sponding improvement in the skills of simulations with the
improvements in resolution. It is also important to understand
the implications of using higher resolutions on the model uncer-
tainty and specifically, how the SNR changes with the change in
resolution. The improvements in ensemble simulations with BMA
when compared with that of Multi-Model Averaging (MMA) may
also change with the change in resolutions and such evaluations
have not been reported in literature. Here, in this present study,
we attempt to address these questions with the case study applica-
tion to the Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall (ISMR). We apply sta-
tistical downscaling, at multiple resolutions, viz., 0.05°, 0.25° and
0.50 for entire India. We use 19 GCMs from the CMIP5 suite, which
is a fairly large number of models to project rainfall. The perfor-
mances of the models are evaluated at multiple scales, as well as
with a common scale, where the downscaling is followed by
re-gridding/interpolation. PDF based skill scores are used for eval-
uation (Perkins et al., 2007) of models. Both MMA and BMA are
computed and compared at different resolutions. We also evaluate
the models for their SNR (Duan and Philips, 2010) at different res-
olution to understand the impacts of resolution on SNR. The next
section presents the details of the data used for this study.
2. Data
A statistical downscaling model (Fig. 1) first develops an empir-
ical relationship between synoptic scale circulation patterns (pre-
dictors) and the local variable of interest (predictand). The
relationship is then further applied to the GCM simulations of
the future to project the regional climate scenarios. Here, we use
the National Centre for Environmental Prediction/National Centre
for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis data as predic-
tors and the gridded rainfall as the predictand. For calibration of
the model, we use the gridded rainfall data, provided by the Asian
Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration
towards Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE) at multiple
resolutions.
The selection of predictors is a crucial step in developing a
statistical downscaling model. The output of the statistical down-
scaling method is sensitive to the choice of predictor variables.
The criteria used for selections of predictors are that they should
be reliably simulated by GCMs, available in the GCM archive and
physically associated with the variable of interest (Wilby et al.,
2004). Considering these criteria, the predictors used for ISMR
downscaling (also used in Salvi et al., 2013; Kannan and Ghosh,
2013; Shashikanth et al., 2013) are air temperature, wind velocities
(U and V wind), specific humidity at both 500 hPa pressure level
and the surface and the Mean Sea Level Pressure (MSLP). These
predictors are based on the study by Shashikanth et al. (2013) for
ISMR.
The NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data (Kalnay et al., 1996), used for
the predictors, are extracted for latitudes 5°N–40°N and longitude
60°E–120°E, encompassing the entire India. This is a global gridded
product and continually updated through data assimilation to judi-
ciously blend physical observations and model simulations dating
back to 1948. The Reanalysis data is a surrogate for observed data
for any predictor variable. The resolution of NCEP/NCAR reanalysis
product is 2.5° lat  2.5° long. For downscaling purposes, India is
first subdivided into seven meteorological subdivisions as per India
3166 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177
Fig. 1. Statistical downscaling (SD) algorithm used for the study.
Meteorological Department (IMD) categorization (Parthasarathy
et al., 1996) and the spatial extent of the predictors for different
zones are different (Fig. 2). They are selected based on the correla-
tion between the spatially averaged rainfall and gridded predictors
(Salvi et al., 2013).
The gridded rainfall data, provided by APHRODITE (Yatagai
et al., 2012) is used as the predictand, and is obtained at monthly
intervals for the spatial resolution 0.5°, 0.25° and 0.05°. They are
based on (i) GTS (Global Telecommunication system) data (ii) data
compiled by the organizations from the respective countries like,
India Meteorological Department (IMD) for India, and (iii) APHRO-
DITE’s own data collection system with proper quality control
(Yatagai et al., 2012). For historic and future simulations, we
selected 19 GCMs, from CMIP5 archives, and obtained the outputs
at monthly time scale. The list of GCMs is provided in Table 2. The
GCM simulated predictors are obtained from the Program for Cli-
mate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI). For future
rainfall projections of ISMR, Representative Concentration Path-
ways 4.5 (RCP4.5) is considered for the present work. RCP 4.5 rep-
resents a stabilization scenario where the total radiative forcing is
stabilized at 4.5 W/m2 at 2100, by employing a range of technolo-
gies and strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Wise et al.,
2009).
3. Methodology
In the present analysis, we first downscale the monthly rainfall
to 0.50°, 0.25° and 0.05° spatial resolutions, with 19 GCMs. The
resulting uncertainty is modelled with Bayesian modelling and
the SNR is evaluated for each of the resolution. Brief overview of
downscaling, uncertainty modelling and estimation of SNR are
discussed in the following subsections.
3.1. Statistical downscaling
The statistical relationship, developed between the reanalysis
predictors and gridded rainfall is based on a linear regression, sim-
ilar to the ‘‘Statistical DownScaling Model’’ (SDSM), developed by
Wilby and Dawson (2004). The methodology is presented in
Fig. 1 and is applied to the seven meteorologically homogeneous
zones (Parthasarathy et al., 1996) over India. The gridded
multi-dimensional predictors are highly correlated amongst each
other and together form high dimensional covariates. This leads
to multicollinearity in a linear regression. As the present model
is developed for monthly monsoon rainfall and the sample size
of calibration set length is small, and the model may over fit the
data with high dimensional predictors. Hence, we apply Principal
Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce dimensionality by retaining
the major fraction of the variability of the predictor field. Here,
we use first few principal components (PCs) which together repre-
sent 90% of the variability of original predictors. The principal com-
ponents (PCs) thus obtained are regressed with the rainfall, at
individual grids. The set of predictors and hence the principal com-
ponents, used as regressors, remain unchanged for all the grids in a
homogeneous region. The model is calibrated for the period 1970–
2005, for all three spatial resolutions. Applying the principal direc-
tions obtained from reanalysis for computing the PCs, to the GCM
output may introduce new bias. However, this is a standard proce-
dure (Wilby et al., 2004), which is followed for the GCM outputs, to
apply the same relationship, which is obtained between reanalysis
predictors and observed predictand. Obtaining the individual prin-
cipal direction from each GCM will not ensure this and hence is not
followed. A possible solution would be merging of reanalysis and
GCM predictors for obtaining the PCs, and is a potential area of
future research.
The calibrated model is then applied to the GCM simulations
after bias correction. GCM simulations are first regridded to the
reanalysis grids, and then Wilby et al. (2004) method of standard-
ization is applied. The principal directions obtained from the
reanalysis data is applied to the bias corrected GCM predictors
for obtaining the principal components (PCs) corresponding to
GCMs. These PC are then used in the calibrated linear regression
model to obtain gridded rainfall simulations for the historic (here,
we consider, 1970–2005) and future (2010–2099) periods (RCP 4.5
scenario).
3.2. Evaluating the GCM simulations
The downscaled GCM simulations are first evaluated based on
the deviations from the long term mean and standard deviations
for the historic period. However, such evaluations may not com-
pare the observed and projected simulations in terms of all the
statistical characteristics and variability. Hence, here we apply
the evaluation metric, suggested by Perkins et al. (2007), where
the skill of the simulation is measured with respect to the
resemblance of its Probability Density Functions (PDFs) to that
of observed.
In this evaluation method, first the entire range of observed/
simulations are divided into multiple bins. This methodology cal-
culates the cumulative minimum value between the model and
observed data distribution in each of bin; thereby measuring the
common area between two PDFs. If a model simulates the
observed data perfectly, the skill score is equal to 1. If it simulates
the data poorly, the skill score is equal to zero. Mathematically, the
Skill score (S-score is given by)
X
n
S-score ¼ minimumðZ m ; Z o Þ ð1Þ
i¼1
 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177 3167

(A)

Jammu and Kashmir Zone

Lat. 27.5N - 40 N
Long. 70 E - 82.5 E
NEH Zone
Lat. 25 N – 32.5 N
Long. 90 E - 100 E
Western Zone North Zone
Lat 17.5 N - 35N Lat. 15 N – 32..5 N (B)
Long 65 E - 80 E Long. 72.5 E – 92.5E
Central Zone
Lat. 12.5 N - 30 N
Long. 70 E - 87.5 E

North East Zone

Lat. 20 N – 32.5 N
Long. 85 E - 100 E

South Zone
Lat. 5 N – 22.5 N
Long. 70 E - 90 E

Seven Meteorologically homogeneous zones of

Indian Region as per India Meteorological
Department (IMD), (Parthasarathy et al.,1996)
with spatial extent of predictors

Fig. 2. Meteorological homogeneous regions of India identified by IMD (A) (Parthasarathy et al., 1996) and the areal extent of predictors for the central zone (B).

Table 2
List of GCMs used in monthly rainfall downscaling.

S. no. Name Institution Resolution

Lat (°) Long (°)
1 BCC-CSM1 Beijing Climate Centre 2.7906 2.8125
2 BNU-ESM College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University 2.79 2.81
3 CCCma-CAN-ESM2 Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis 2.8 2.8
4 CMCC-CMS Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per I CambiamentiClimatici 1.87 1.88
5 CNRM-CM5 Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques 1.4 1.4
6 CSIR-ACCESS 1–0 CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia), 1.25 1.875
and BOM (Bureau of Meteorology, Australia)
7 CSIRO-Mk3–6-0 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in collaboration 1.87 1.88
with Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence
8 FIO-ESM The First Institute of Oceanography, SOA, China 2.79 2.81
9 GISS-E2-R-CC NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies 2.00 2.5
10 Had-GEM2-E2S Met Office Hadley Centre 1.875 1.25
11 INM-CM4 Inst. for Numerical Mathematics 1.5 2
12 IPSL-CM5A-LR Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace 1.89 3.75
13 IPSL-CM5A-MR Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace 1.89 3.75
14 MIROC5 Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute (University of Tokyo)and others 1.4 1.41
15 MIROC-ESM Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute (University of Tokyo)and others 2.8 2.8
16 MPI-ESM-MR Max-Planck-Inst. For Meteorology 1.8652 1.875
17 NASA-GISS-E2-R NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies 2 2.5
18 NorESM1-ME Norwegian Climate Centre 1.8947 2.5
19 NorESM1-M Norwegian Climate Centre 1.5 1.9
3168 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177

where n = total number of bins; Zm = frequency values in a given bin where (i) and s are iterations and spatial points, respectively, S is the
from model m; Zo = frequency values in a given bin from observed total number of spatial points. For further details refer to Duan and
data. Philips (2010) and Raftery et al. (2005).
The S-score is computed for each grid, and then the spatial dis-
tribution of this score is obtained in terms of the PDF. The PDFs of 3.4.1. BMA consensus Expectation and uncertainty estimation
S-scores, obtained from multiple resolutions are compared. The BMA expected mean of posterior PDFs for the past and
future climates are estimated as a weighted sum of individual
3.3. Uncertainty modelling with Bayesian approach model simulations and are calculated as below:
X X
EðY P jf p1 ; f p2 ; . . . ; f pk Þ ¼ wk  EðY P jf pk Þ ¼ wk  f pk ð6Þ
Conventional approach for simulating projections with multiple k
models is to obtain the multi-model average, assuming that the
X X
positive and negative errors in the models will cancel each other EðY F jf F1 ; f F2 ; . . . ; f Fk Þ ¼ wk  EðY F jf Fk Þ ¼ wk  f Fk ð7Þ
out (Knutti, 2010), resulting in more reliable projections. Following k
Duan and Philips (2010), here we briefly discuss the steps for
assignment of weights to GCMs, with the Bayesian Model Averag- The total variances are the measures of spreads (uncertainties)
  of the posterior PDFs and are given by the following expressions:
ing (BMA). The parameters to be determined are h ¼ wk ; r2PK ; r2FK ,
where wk are the weights to each GCM (wk for kth GCM), rPK are 2 !2
X X X
the variance for each of the past/historical downscaled GCMs and r2 ðY P jf p1 ; f p2 ; . . . ; f pk Þ ¼ wk  f PK  wk  f PK
r2FK are the variance for each of downscaled GCM’s future k k k
X
projections. þ wk  r2 ðY TP jf PK Þ ð8Þ
k
Step 1: Let us assume the vectors y = (YP, YF) denote the down-
scaled data set consisting of past-climate (YP) and sim- !2
X X X
ulated climate variable for the future (YF) from each of 2
r ðY F jf F1 ; f F2 ; . . . ; f FK Þ ¼ wk  f FK  wk  f FK
the GCMs. The two data sets are assumed to be inde- k k k
X
pendent of each other and follow Gaussian þ wk  r2 ðY TF jf FK Þ ð9Þ
distributions. k

gðyjhk Þ ¼ gðyp ; yF jhPk ; hFk Þ ¼ gðyP jhPk Þ  gðyF jhFk Þ ð2Þ

where hPk, hFk denote parameters for past and future downscaled 3.5. Estimation of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)
simulated GCM output. The above equation is based on Bayes’
theorem. The estimation of signal to noise ratio is the measure of the
Step 2: The log likelihood function for Eq. (2), becomes robustness of a projection of a climate variable (rainfall)
X X (Hawkins and Sutton, 2011). This is estimated with the help of
lðhÞ ¼ log wk  gðY TP jhPK Þ  gðY TF jhFK Þ ð3Þ downscaled climate variables for the past and the future in individ-
ðsÞ k ual models ({fP1, fP2,. . ., fPK}, {fF1, fF2,. . ., fFK}) from GCMs along with
where YTP and YTF are evidentiary targets (observed) and weighted the BMA parameters h ¼ fW k ; r2PK ; r2FK g. The steps are as follows
multimodel consensus estimates of climate variable for the future, (Duan and Philips, 2010);
respectively.
Since g(YP|hP) and g(YF|hF) are Gaussian functions, the maximum i. Select the ensemble size of 1000. Set spatial point i = 1, and
likelihood estimates of the means lk of the individual model ensemble j = 1.
simulations are equal to the mean of the simulations them- ii. A GCM is selected randomly based on uniform random num-
selves; i.e., lPk = fPk and lFK = fFk. The fPk and fFk are the means ber and a probability is generated randomly. The values are
of downscaled simulations of the climate variable for the past obtained as YPK(i,j) from the PDF of normal distribution
ðiÞ ðiÞ
and future in each GCM. gðY PK jf PK ; r2PK Þ and YFK(i,j) from the PDF of normal distribu-
Step 3: The parameters h = {wk, r2PK ; r2FK } in Eq. (3) are estimated ðiÞ ðiÞ
tion gðY FK jf FK ; r2FK Þ using the parameters and compute
using Expectation–Maximization (E–M) algorithm. Dy(i,j) = YFK(i,j)  YPK(i,j).
iii. Complete step (ii) for all ensembles (1000) and for all spatial
3.4. Expectation–Maximization algorithm points for a given resolution.
iv. Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) is computed as; The Difference of
EM algorithm is an iterative method and consists of two steps; future and past climate expected changes/standard devia-
the Expectation (E) step and the Maximization (M) step. tion (Dy). The expected weighted mean changes are
It begins with the initial guess of parameter h(0) for the param- obtained from Eqs. (6) and (7). This measures SNR for local
eter vector h = {wk, r2PK , r2FK }. In the E step, a quantity Zkst estimated climate change. For further details refer to Duan and
given present values of parameters; however Zkst takes two values; Philips (2010).
either 0 or 1. Where Zkst = 1 if ensemble member k is best forecast
for particular (s, t). Otherwise Zkst = 0.
4. Results and discussion
Thus, the E-step yields,
n o A linear regression based statistical downscaling method is
ðiÞ ðiÞ ðiÞ ðiÞ ðiÞ ðiÞ ðiÞ ðiÞ
Z kst ¼ gðY TP jhPK Þ  gðY TF jhPK Þ= Rk gðY TP jhPK Þ  gðY TF jhFK Þ ð4Þ
adopted for rainfall projections of ISMR at multiple resolutions,
viz., 0.05°, 0.25° and 0.50°, at monthly time scale to understand
While the M-step leads to, their projections and inter-compare them for potential differences.
X ðiÞ The results are presented in the following subsections which
ðiÞ
wk ¼ Z ks =S ð5Þ includes a comparison of simulations with observations for the his-
s
torical period, comparisons of PDF, comparison between BMA and
 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177 3169

(A) (B)

4 3

(C) (D)

4 3

(E) (F)

4 5

(G)

Fig. 3. The cumulative percentage of variance explained by NCEP/NCAR principal components (PCs) in the different zones for the zonal wind (u) at 500 hpa (90% variability
shown along with principal component number).

MMA, uncertainty across space and time, and the Signal to Noise
Ratio (SNR).
4.1. Comparison of results between the model and observations for
historical period
The results of downscaled product are evaluated with respect to
observed rainfall data (Fig. 3). Figs. 3 and 4 show the grid-wise
details of the mean and standard deviation and are shown in the
order of the observed rainfall, the multi-model average from 19
GCMs, the absolute percentage errors in the mean and the standard
deviation. The results show that characteristics of the mean are
quite faithful to the observational estimates. The spatial pattern
of Indian monsoon rainfall is governed by orography due to the
hilly regions of Himalayas, Western Ghats, Sapura, Vindhya and
Aravali ranges (Salvi et al., 2013; Rajendran and Kitoh, 2008). GCMs
being coarse resolution models, cannot capture the spatial variabil-
ity of ISMR. Here, we find that the statistical downscaling captures
the occurrences of high rainfall in the windward side of the Wes-
tern Ghats and low rainfall for the leeward side. The Rajasthan
3170 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177

Observed Mean Projected Ensemble Absolute Percentage

at 0.050 mean at 0.050 Errors in mean at 0.050

(A) (B) (C)

Observed Mean Projected Ensemble mean Absolute Percentage Errors

at 0.25 at 0.25 in mean at 0.25

(D) (E) (F)

Observed Mean Projected Ensemble mean Absolute Percentage Errors

at 0.50 at 0.50 in mean at 0.50

(G) (H) (I)

mm/day
Fig. 4. The absolute percentage errors in the mean of multi-model averaged downscaled simulations at 0.05°, 0.25° and 0.50° spatial resolutions, respectively.

receives scanty rainfall because the orientation of Aravali ranges,
and is also observed in the downscaling simulations. The North-
east part of India receives heavy rainfall because presence of
mountainous regions and is captured by statistical downscaling.
For majority of the grids over the Indian landmass, the abso-
lute percentage errors in the mean (Fig. 3(C), (F), and (I)) and
the standard deviation (Fig. 4(C), (F) and (I)) are found to be
around 10%. Similarly the absolute percentage error for standard
deviation is also less than 10% for most of the grids. However,
parts of the western and southern regions receive very scanty
rainfall and traditionally, the statistical downscaling model can
only poorly capture this variability of rainfall (Salvi et al., 2013).
In those regions, the absolute percentage error for standard devi-
ation is over 30%. The monthly means are expressed as mm/day.
Along with the mean, the spatial pattern and temporal variability
of rainfall is also well captured by the statistical model with a
high degree of accuracy. The spatial dependence of rainfall
between rainfall stations has also been well modelled by the
model. In the present analysis, for developing the statistical
downscaling, we have used the PCs in each of the seven zones
separately and established the regression relation. We have
shown in Fig. 5, the cumulative percentage variance explained
by the NCEP/NCAR PCs in different zones for the zonal wind (u)
at 500 hPa at 90% variability.
The linear regression in statistical downscaling assumes that
the residuals follow normal distribution. We check the normality
assumptions for the residuals at multiple resolutions (Fig. 6). We
find that the errors at majority of the nodes follow normal distribu-
tion. We find that for 0.05°, 0.25° and 0.5° resolutions, around 15%,
27% and 35% nodes violate the normality assumptions, respec-
tively. The assumption is violated in the low rainfall regions which
are mostly located in the western part and Jammu Kashmir regions
of India. This is considered as the limitation of this study. The use
of generalized linear regression or robust regression approaches
may yield better results. The 0.5 degree downscaling has a slightly
higher percentage of around 35% violations.
 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177 3171

Observed Standard Projected Ensemble Standard Absolute Percentage Errors in

Deviaon at 0.050 deviaon at 0.050 Standard Deviaon at 0.050

(A) (B) (C)

Observed Standard Projected Ensemble Standard Absolute Percentage Errors in

Deviaon at 0.25 0 deviaon at 0.250 Standard Deviaon at 0.250

(D) (E) (F)

Observed Standard Projected Ensemble Standard Absolute Percentage Errors in

Deviaon at 0.5 0 deviaon at 0.50 Standard deviaon at 0.50

(G) (H) (I)

Fig. 5. The absolute percentage errors in the standard deviation of multi model averaged downscaled simulations at 0.05°, 0.25°and 0.50° spatial resolutions, respectively.

0.05 0 0.25 0 0.50 0

(A) (B) (C)

15% 27% 35%

Non-Normal Normal
Distribuon Distribuon

Fig. 6. Grids, where the residuals follow a normal distribution at 0.05°, 0.25° and 0.50° spatial resolutions, respectively. Fractions of grids, where residuals do not follow a
normal distribution, are also shown.

4.2. Skill score based PDF comparison
The present statistical downscaling method captures the mean
conditions very well for multiple resolutions over the historical
period. Here, we also use the Skill score (S-score) for evaluation,
which is based on the similarity of the PDFs computed with both
observations and simulations for the historic period (Fig. 7).
Fig. 7a shows that the skill score obtained from the transfer func-
tion based downscaling at different resolutions are almost similar;
however, such a conclusion is not valid for the interpolation
3172 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177
PDF of Skill Score for 0.050 resoluon
PDF of Skill Score for 0.250 resoluon
PDF of Skill Score for 0.50 resoluon
Fig. 7. Skill scores for downscaled projections at three resolutions, viz., 0.05°, 0.25° and 0.50°. The spatial distribution is represented as a PDF. Panel A represents the skill
score at different resolutions. Panel B shows the skill score at 0.05°, where the downscaled simulations of 0.25° and 0.50° are further interpolated.
0.05 0
(A)
Fig. 8. Weights obtained for different GCMs at different resolutions with Bayesian modelling for 2080s.
method (Fig. 7b). We also perform downscaling at different resolu-
tions, viz., 0.50°, 0.25° and 0.05° and then re-grid the first two into
the latter one. We observe that model performance is best for 0.05°
resolution and reduces with the coarseness of downscaling resolu-
tion (Fig. 7b).
We apply a transfer function based statistical downscaling
approach, which relies on the statistical relationship between the
large scale circulation pattern (predictor) and local rainfall (pre-
dictand). The other approach of downscaling is a change factor
based method, which involves interpolation and bias correction.
Here, we regrid 0.5° and 0.25° datasets to 0.05° to check if such
an interpolation method is really valid for the spatially varying
monsoon rainfall. The results show, that interpolation method fails
to attain the skill which is possible to achieve with the transfer
function based method. This also points to a very important con-
clusion on the possible failure of methods such as the Bias Correc-
tion Spatial Disaggregation (BCSD), which are widely used and
based on interpolation and bias correction. The reason is probably
that the high spatial variability of the Indian monsoon rainfall. This
is quite expected since the reduction of model performance is pri-
marily due to interpolation without additional information from
synoptic scale circulation. This also highlights a possible limitation
of widely used change factor based statistical downscaling meth-
ods, such as the BCSD (Wood et al., 2004), which is just a combina-
tion of interpolation and bias correction.
4.3. Comparison of results based on BMA and MMA
To know the plausible changes in future rainfall, we consider
downscaled rainfall projections for RCP4.5 scenarios at 0.50°,
0.25° and 0.05° resolutions. We consider the projections obtained
with both MMA and BMA. The weights obtained by using BMA
(A) PDF of Skill score for 0.050 Resoluon (B)
PDF of Skill score for 0.250 Resoluon
further regridded to 0.05 0
PDF of Skill score for 0.500 Resoluon
further regridded to 0.050
0.25 0 0.50 0
(B) (C)
are presented in Fig. 8 at different resolutions for the 2080s. We
obtain consistently higher weights for GISS, CMCC, MIROC and
MPI at all the resolutions. Similarly, consistently lower weights
are assigned to BCC, BNU and CCCMA.
The projections obtained with both MMA (Fig. 9a–c) and BMA
(Fig. 9d–f) show spatially non-uniform projected changes of ISMR
for the 21st century. Increases in precipitation are projected for
the Himalayan foothills, the west coast, and the northern regions,
while decreasing trends are observed in the Gangetic West Bengal
and regions of Central India with mixed results in Southern India.
The increase/decrease in rainfall for future time slices is consistent
with other studies with fine resolution models (Salvi et al., 2013;
Shashikanth et al., 2013; Rupa Kumar et al., 2006; Rajendran and
Kitoh, 2008). The orographic rainfall is expected to increase in west
coast and the northeast part of India in the future in those studies
also. We find spatially non-uniform projected changes of ISMR
which is not visible in the original simulations from GCMs
(Shashikanth et al., 2013). Rajendran and Kitoh (2008) suggested
that there will be changes in the moisture holding capacity of
atmosphere in the future; mean changes in the wind and conver-
gence of moisture at 850 hPa, evaporation, and precipitable water
(PWAT) are some of the causes for future changes in mean rainfall
over India. In general, we expect intensification of land–ocean tem-
perature gradient, a strengthening of the of low pressure trough,
and more moisture in atmosphere (as per the Clausius–Clapeyron
relation), which may intensify the ISMR in the future (Kripalani
et al., 2007). However, uneven heating may result in uneven
distribution of rainfall resulting non-uniform changes and the past
decades have shown a decreasing trend in ISMR despite the rapid
warming of the Indian Ocean and the models are unable to capture
this trend (Saha et al., 2013). For the present study, we have
considered a blend of predictors which increases our confidence
 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177 3173

Changes in the mean for Changes in the mean for Changes in the mean for
0.050 Resoluon 0.250 Resoluon 0.500 Resoluon
(A) (B) (C)
MMA MMA MMA

mm/day

(D) (E) (F)

BMA BMA BMA

(G) (H) (I)

MMA-BMA MMA-BMA MMA-BMA %

Fig. 9. Projected changes in mean rainfall for a future period (2070–2099) with respect to the base line period (1970–2005),with Multi-Model Average (MMA) at 0.05° (A),
0.25° (B) and 0.50° (C) and with BMA (D–F, respectively). The percentage difference between MMA and BMA are presented in panels G–I.

0.05 0 0.25 0 0.50 0

(A) (B) (C)

25% 28% 27%

Non-Normal Normal
Distribuon Distribuon

Fig. 10. Grids, where the projected changes in rainfall follow normal distribution at 0.05°, 0.25°and 0.50° spatial resolutions, respectively. Fractions of grids, where changes
do not follow normal distribution, are also shown.

in climate projections for the future. The statistical downscaling
assumes stationarity in the relation between predictors and pre-
dictands. This is the main limitation of the present work.
We find that the changes projected with MMA are slightly more
on the positive side, compared to BMA. This suggests the possibil-
ity of the existence of models with low weights projecting high
positive changes. The differences between BMA and MMA are not
sensitive to the resolution of downscaling. For the application of
BMA, the changes in rainfall should follow normal distribution.
Here we find (Fig. 10) 25%, 28%, 27% of the grids at resolutions
0.05°, 0.25° and 0.5°, respectively, violate this assumption. The
BMA should be applied for those grids with a modified maximum
likelihood function. This is considered as the potential scope for
future research.
The climate projections at global/regional scale are subject to
uncertainty associated with the use of multiple models. Here we
3174 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177

Uncertainty Changes in uncertaines measured with respect to 2020s

2020s 2050s 2080s
(A) (B) (C)

(D) (E) (F)

(G) (H) (I)

Fig. 11. Multi-model uncertainty during 2020s and its changes with time. The uncertainty is measured as coefficient of variation.

use the coefficient of variation (CV) (Shashikanth et al., 2013;
Woldemeskel et al., 2012) as a measure of uncertainty for ISMR
projections at different resolutions and for different time windows
2020s (2010–2039), 2050s (2040–2069) and 2080s (2070–2099).
The relative changes in uncertainties across different resolutions
are measured with respect to 2020s. We find that the model uncer-
tainty is highest for the 2020s and then it gradually decreases with
the lead time (Fig. 11). This is true at all resolutions. The possible
reason is that with the increase in lead time, the climate change
signal becomes more prominent compared to internal variability
and model uncertainty due to the imposed radiative forcings
(Hawkins and Sutton, 2009), resulting in a decrease in the CV
values.
4.4. Estimation of SNR at multiple resolutions
The SNR in climate change projections indicates the strength of
the climate signal with respect to the uncertainty associated with
the use of multiple models. Here we compute SNR for the three
resolutions (0.05°, 0.25°, and 0.50°) for different time periods
(2020s, 2050s and 2080s) (Fig. 12). With the reduction of model
uncertainty, the SNR increases from the 2020s to 2080s for all
resolutions. This is in agreement with Hawkins and Sutton
(2009), where the prominence of climate change signal is argued
to emerge at longer lead times. We also find that SNR does not
depend on the resolution of downscaling. Statistical downscaling
uses the statistical relationship between the fine resolution rainfall
and coarse resolution circulation patterns and hence this is mostly
affected by the uncertainty in the circulation patterns due to the
use of multiple GCMs. Increase in resolution does not add any
source of uncertainty into the downscaling method and hence
the SNR and uncertainty remain unaffected by the change in reso-
lution. Though fine resolution modelling improves the simulation
of local scale climatology (Fig. 7), it does not necessarily add any
value in terms of changes (Fig. 9), uncertainty (Fig. 11) and SNR
(Fig. 12). The primary purpose for downscaling in climate change
studies is to model the projected changes and here we do not find
any significant improvements or differences in the projected
changes. However, the selection of optimal resolution for down-
scaling is essential for specifically capturing the orography and
region-specific land, ocean, atmosphere interactions which are
generally not considered in coarse resolution GCM simulations.
The present analysis points to the need for research activities in
understanding the optimum resolution required in downscaling
 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177 3175

0.05 0 0.25 0 0.50 0

S (A) (B) (C)

N
R
2
0
2
0

(D) (E) (F)

S
N
R
2
0
5
0

(G) (H) (I)

S
N
R
2
0
8
0

Fig. 12. The Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) for projections at multiple resolutions for different time periods. The pie chart shows the fraction of grid points having SNR more/less
than 0.5.

(specific to a region), to capture the orographic and other local
effects, and at the same time, not to increase the resolution unless
beneficial effects are expected on the SNR to justify the high com-
putational efforts.
5. Conclusions
In this study, we use statistical downscaling for projections of
ISMR at multiple resolutions. The primary objective is to under-
stand the improvements obtained by increasing the spatial resolu-
tion from 0.50° to 0.05°. Following are the main conclusions from
the present study.
1. The skill score plots (Fig. 7) show improvements in simulating
climatology at the finest resolution (0.05°) with respect to
observed data, when we use direct statistical downscaling at that
finest resolution in comparison to that of simulations (at 0.05°)
interpolated from coarser resolution downscaled data (0.5° and
0.25°). This result also highlights the failure of the interpolation
method, which are often coupled with a bias correction (Wood
et al., 2004), without any specific regional modelling.
2. Enhanced resolution increases the computational requirements
for any downscaling and hence it is necessary to evaluate the
finest resolution model for payoff in terms of uncertainty and
SNR. We observe that enhanced resolution does not affect the
uncertainty in statistical downscaling. This is specifically
because the key uncertainty in statistical downscaling is due
to the uncertainty in synoptic scale circulation pattern simu-
lated by the parent models or the reanalysis data employed in
developing the statistical relations (Kannan et al., 2014). As
the observed rainfall data at multiple resolutions are obtained
from the same agency, rainfall data does not add resolution-
dependent uncertainty. However, the contrary is not necessar-
ily true; i.e., increasing resolutions does not necessarily
guarantee the usability or the usefulness of the downscaled
product at arbitrarily high resolutions. Caution is thus needed
in using other metrics for determining optimal resolutions for
statistical downscaling. This is reemphasized below in the con-
text of SNR.
3. We also find that the SNR of climate change projections does
not improve by increasing resolution. Here SNR denotes the
strength of the signal of climate change with respect to the
uncertainty. As there is no significant change in uncertainty
with the enhanced resolution, the SNR also remains the same.
This highlights that a finer resolution in statistical downscaling
does not improve the reliability of projected changes; however
an optimal resolution for downscaling is necessary to capture
the major local and orographic factors and other region-specific
convective processes related to the land–atmosphere–ocean
interactions.
3176 K. Shashikanth et al. / Journal of Hydrology 519 (2014) 3163–3177
4. The present study shows that there is no significant difference
between the BMA and MMA projections at any resolution;
though, the projected changes with MMA are slightly more on
the positive side, compared to BMA. This is because of the use
of a relatively large number of models. With the increase in
the number of models, the individual weights are assigned to
lower values. For example, if there are 5 models, with MMA,
the individual weights will be 0.2; but with 20 models, the
weights are reduced to 0.05. The change in the weights, where
they themselves are very low, because of the use of a ‘sufficient’
number of models, may not result in significant changes in the
ultimate multi-model projections.
Further work is needed in determining what this ‘sufficient’
number is and what the optimal resolution for statistical
downscaling would be as the resolution of the regional and global
GCMs and the available data continue to increase. The real ultimate
decider will of course be the use and usability of the products in
decision-making and policy frameworks. The exercise here is but
the first step in exploring these requirements for decision-support.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s
working Group on coupled Modelling, which is responsible for
CMIP, and we thank the modelling groups for producing and mak-
ing available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison
(PCMDI) provides coordinating support and led development of
software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization
for Earth System Science Portals. We would like to thank APHRO-
DITE, Japan for making available 0.050, 0.250 and 0.500 resolution
observed data. We particularly thank Dr. Kamaguchi of APHRODITE,
for making available the 0.05° observed data. Raghu Murtugudde
gratefully acknowledges the National Monsoon Mission funding
for partial support. K Shashikanth acknowledges Qingyun Duan
for his help in understanding Bayesian Multimodel Averaging.
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